EcoGeek of the Week: Jonathon Colman

Jonathon D. Colman is the Senior Manager of Digital Marketing at The Nature Conservancy. As such, it's kinda his job to understand the wild ways of the internet and then to harness it's raw power for the forces of awesome. Of course, The Nature Conservancy is one of the big players in the "International Alliance for Awesomeness." He'll be giving us his take on the web, digital media, and saving this world. We're excited to have Jonathon as this week's EcoGeek of the Week.

EG: OK...lets get this out of the way...briefly, what do you actually do...

JDC: Sure thing! As you know, the mission of The Nature Conservancy is to preserve the plants, animals and natural communities that represent the diversity of life on Earth by protecting the lands and waters they need to survive.

So I help the Conservancy accomplish that vision by leading the strategic management, marketing, and promotion of our flagship web site, www.nature.org. That means that I've got my fingers in a number of cookie jars every day: web development, web traffic recording and analytics, blog and online community outreach, search engine optimization, online ad placements, and posting our stories to online social networks and other "web 2.0" sites. Not to mention organizing a redesign of our web site, developing an RFP for a new web content management system, implementing a new web analytics system, and chatting with my coworkers about how great LOST and Battlestar Galacticaare.

Now, if you're like me — and I am — then you're a geek and would love all that stuff. So I tend to think of my job as just a way of being paid to have fun and work with the best and brightest.

EG: I've seen some resistance among big environmental organizations to embracing online media. Do you run into that at The Nature Conservancy, and, if so, how do you deal with it?

JDC: I think that we face similar challenges with online media as many other organizations: lots of great ideas and very little staff and budget. The way we've overcome this hurdle is to invest our efforts where they'll have the biggest bang for the buck (like bidding on search engine keywords using Google AdWords) as well as using all of the great, free tools and networks that are now available, like Google Analytics, Google Video, Care2, and Gather.com. We've also found a great partner in the Public Radio Exchange, which produces our weekly Nature Storiespodcast.

I also think that nonprofits have been stymied by online communities, what they're for, how to build them, and how to engage them. Our guiding philosophy here is to engage people where they're already being active rather than spending time in R&D building our own version of things that already exist. For example, rather than building our own photo-sharing application, the Conservancy ran a photo contest on Flickr. Rather than build our own GIS mapping system, we put together a Google Maps mashup with the locations of our nature preserves.

Why try to reinvent the wheel when a best-in-class web presence or tool already exists and has a huge audience of millions of people? We'd much rather leverage the expertise of existing communities to find new supporters and engage our existing audiences with fun, exciting opportunities.

EG: Why do you think it took the environmental movement so long to catch the wave? And do you think we've suffered because of it?

JDC: A lot of people working in nonprofit technology (or as we call it, "nptech"), are "accidental techies"; that is, they've been slated with web or technical projects because there's literally no one else to do them. Furthermore, if they're lucky, these folks might get to spend 5-10% of their time working on those technology projects when they're not also doing media relations, fundraising, organizing events, and managing the office. It's hard enough for someone like that to publish a web page, let alone adhere to XHTML standards compliance, optimize their pages for search engines, and — God forbid! — keep up to date with Zeldman, Eric Meyer, Beth Kanter, Holly Ross, and Seth Godin.

A lot of nonprofits invest heavily in program work — after all, that's what the donations are supposed to be supporting, right? And that's what gets you a four-star rating on Charity Navigator. So having a nifty, helpful web site that establishes a strong, trustworthy, credible brand is sometimes seen as an afterthought.

What we've found at the Conservancy, however, is that the web can bring in new supporters, new ideas and resources for project work, and new passion and emotional investment from existing members. Leveraging the strength of your offline, "bricks-and-mortar" brand can help you reach new audiences online.

EG: We at EcoGeek love readers of sites like Digg and Reddit and Slashdot. Has TNC had success with social news?

JDC: Social news is a big, growing area for us. The type of things we post regularly on Digg and Netscape and Newsvine are real-world events, announcements, and discoveries — so our online efforts dovetail with what we're doing offline. We're becoming popular on Digg and a number of the other big social news networks regularly because of the strength of our content. We've brought huge amounts of new visitors to our site through these tools and have worked hard to develop engaging communities on them at the same time.

We see these emerging web sites and news venues as being important because they dictate, for a growing amount of people, how news and information are now being discovered online. There are a lot of good, engaging stories that end up on the cutting room floor of the daily newspaper and nightly TV news, even though they're worthy of broadcast, solely for lack of space, right? Well, social news networks don't have to plan their layout in picas, charge for home delivery, and never run out of space for breaking news. And because they're fairly democratic, our organization has just as much chance at engaging people with our news and stories as does anyone else.

As far as demographics, my sense of the folks using social media and "web 2.0" sites is that they're very advanced in their grasp of technology and the online world. They have access to many sources of information and are used to looking at multiple perspectives of issues. They're also not afraid to speak their minds where they see fault — or inspiration! — and, indeed, expect to be able to share their thoughts directly with the entities making the news.

Me, I don't want to play it safe and only talk just to the folks who I know are going to agree with my ideas about the importance of conservation that's way too easy and it leads only to a lack of growth. I want to talk with the ones who are skeptical, who aren't so sure of the science, who don't believe everything that they're told. Ultimately, if I can help them to convince themselves to support the environment, then they'll be much more passionate about it and motivated to make a real change than if I just spam them with e-mail day after day. In reality, they'll do all of the hard work of conversion; I'm just helping them by making resources and information available.

I love meeting new people on these networks and finding out what they're interested in, so EcoGeek readers, please send me your connection requests!

EG: I've been really impressed by a lot of TNC's current projects. Are you proud of what you guys do? (why)

JDC: You bet! It's a great adventure each day, just getting up, walking out the door and taking public transportation to work. We could be focusing on the Great Bear Rainforest in Canada, the endangered coral reefs in tropical areas around the world, or even the oft-overlooked connections between HIV/AIDS and wildlife conservation in Africa. It's great to work with such dedicated, passionate people. No two days are ever alike and while there are always little things that get in the way, we try to keep in mind that everyone wants to help protect nature to benefit people, animals, and the environment as a whole.

The bottom line is that The Nature Conservancy is an organization that gets things done or as one of my colleagues often states, "Conservation plus adrenaline equals 100% job satisfaction!"

EG: Sometimes this business can get a little overwhelming. Is there any issue that particularly scares your pants off?

JDC: Climate change is no joke — it's not the sort of thing we can play around with and ask for a do-over if we get it wrong. I sincerely believe it's the single biggest threat facing our world right now. The upside to this is that it's not all doom and gloom — there are many things that we can do in terms of science, technology, policies, business practices, and personal behaviors to help slow the effects of climate change.

To this end, the Conservancy recently launched a carbon footprint calculator to help our visitors determine their impact on the climate. Our web application helps you see that even little changes in our daily routines can make a big difference when everyone works together.

EG: It's a pretty scary world...at the end of the day, what keeps you hopeful?

JDC: The passion of our supporters, the dedication and persistence of the Conservancy's staff, the discoveries that we're making every day in conservation science, the way that people are using the web to get closer to each other than ever before, and the strength of human creativity and imagination.

OK, I understand what you're getting at here and I'd have to say that, as a marketer, it's the strength, longevity, and credibility of The Nature Conservancy's brand. I think that marketers often get in trouble for promising things that they can't deliver — and that's just not the case with TNC.

We've been around for over 55 years and part of people's families for generations. I think people look at us and understand that we're the conservation organization that works both locally and around the world, that we use the best available science to guide our work, that we achieve tangible and lasting results, and that we create solutions that benefit both nature and people, all while using a non-confrontational approach.

And no matter how much coffee I drink, no amount of search engine optimization or Technorati authority or MySpace friends can add up to that.

EG: Do you love the internet? Why?

JDC: It's often hard for us to remember that, just a little over a decade ago, the InterWeb as we know it didn't exist. Not a drop of Wi-fi to be found in coffee shops, no way to pay bills online, and it was about the last place you'd go if you were trying to find a job, an apartment, or even a movie to see. In fact, I can specifically remember not loving the Internet when all the discussion on it was about how people were going to use it to make money, if only they could figure out how!

But what I see happening today is people from all over the world getting to know one another, breaking down barriers, and discovering new and innovative ways to make change happen on issues that they care about. And that's damn exciting! We couldn't have guessed fifteen years ago that my job would even exist, let alone the Internet as it is now. I love it, I live it, and I spend a good portion of my waking moments using it. I think it's the tool that humanity is using to turn our dreams into reality and construct the future from the present.